Amusement parks often include rides in which vehicles are used to transport passengers. Due to the nature of an amusement park ride, passengers must be restrained during the ride to inhibit them from exiting their seats.
There are many methods of restraining passengers in vehicles. These methods include lap bars and padded assemblies that capture a passenger's legs, torso, and/or shoulders. Each of these methods has any number of drawbacks that make it unsuitable for use in general, and that make it especially unsuitable for use in battery-operated lightweight vehicles. For example, lap bars are undesirable in general for vehicles in which a single bar serves to secure multiple passengers on a single row. Because passengers come in all shapes and sizes, the largest passenger in the row determines how close the lap bar can come to the remaining passengers in the row. Lap bars for individual seats are available; however, every individual lap bar may require its own opening and/or closing mechanism, which includes hinges and other mechanical parts. Multiplying the number of lap bars thus results in an increase in the weight and parts count of the vehicle.
Individual molded or padded restraints that pull down over a passenger's shoulders pose many of the same problems for vehicle designers as multiple lap bars. In addition to being weighty, these known means of securing passengers are expensive and occupy more space in a vehicle, in comparison, for example, to a conventional seatbelt system such as those found in automobiles.
Weight is an important design parameter for any vehicle. Designers of passenger vehicles, for use in an outside of amusement parks, may attempt to reduce the weight of their designs for any number of reasons including cost and fuel or power efficiency. In self-propelled battery operated vehicles, the weight and size of the vehicle may be critical design parameters. If a designer is able to reduce the weight of a battery operated vehicle, the designer could, for example, use smaller or fewer battery cells (and thereby reduce the weight of the vehicle even further), or for the same size battery as the original vehicle, the designer could extend the distance, or duration, of powered travel, or increase the number of passengers carried by the vehicle.
Use of a seatbelt system would appear to be an answer to several of the problems presented to the inventors. Well-known seatbelt systems, such as those used in automobiles, include a buckle component and a tongue component. The tongue is inserted into the buckle and is passively secured therein. Both the buckle and the tongue are tethered to individual lengths of flexible seatbelt webbing at first ends of the webbing. The webbing is typically anchored to a structure at the opposite second ends of the webbing. However, typical seatbelt systems are not appropriate for amusement park type ride vehicles, at least because passengers would be able to operate the release buttons found on seatbelt buckles and release themselves from the seatbelts. A passenger that is able to release himself from a seatbelt could leave the confines of the relatively safe ride vehicle, and wander into areas where risk of personal injury and even death might await.
Devices are known that prevent a small child from releasing the tongue of a seatbelt from its buckle, but these devices are child-safety devices—these devices allow an adult to release the tongue from the buckle. Devices are also known for use in prisoner transportation applications. These devices deprive a prisoner of the ability to release the tongue of a seatbelt from its buckle, while selectively giving that same ability to a law enforcement officer. Known devices of this type are temporarily installed over seatbelt buckles that are tethered to seatbelt webbing. The law enforcement officer is able to selectively release the tongue of the seatbelt from its corresponding buckle because he was entrusted to carry a key to permit the officer to depress the release button while the device is in place, or to permit the officer to remove the device from the buckle. Other systems that restrict passengers from releasing a seatbelt tongue from its buckle may exist, but known systems are understood to be expensive and complicated. At least because of complexity, weight, circumvention of the intended purpose of a device, lack of a permanent tamperproof installation, and/or cost, all known systems are less than desirable for use in battery-operated vehicles that convey passengers through an amusement park ride. One example of such a vehicle is known as a trackless dark ride vehicle (TDRV). As the name implies, a TDRV does not run upon, and is not guided by, a track.
As mentioned above, there is a tradeoff between the weight of a vehicle and the distance and length of time the vehicle can operate on battery power. The greater the weight, or the greater the operating time and distance of travel, the higher the dissipation of power stored in the battery. Additional drains on battery power may include sound, light, and vibration effects that may be utilized in a TDRV. Still another drain on the battery, if the TDRV is so equipped, includes the energy required to lift, drop, and tilt the seats of the TDRV's passengers.
What is needed is a lightweight, uncomplicated, and inexpensive (compared to known systems) seatbelt system that permits plurality of individual passengers to engage their own seatbelt tongues into seatbelt buckles and allows for an authorized simultaneous release of numerous seatbelt tongues from their respective buckles. The desired seatbelt system would simultaneously prevent passengers from operating the release button of his/her own seatbelt, thereby preventing each passenger from releasing his/her own seatbelt tongue from its buckle.